Ball State University is full of cheaters. If you believe the polling prowess of the comedy site CollegeHumor.com, that is. In the site's recent online survey, 71.9 percent of Ball State respondents claimed they had cheated in college.
Although Ball State officials are questioning the validity of the survey, there's no doubt that cheating, and subsequently cheating prevention measures, can both be found at Ball State. The real issue, however, isn't how many people cheat - it's how the university decides to deal with the problem.
Ball State officials and faculty need to find more appropriate and effective ways of dealing with cheating in the future so that cheating doesn't become more of a problem than it already is.
Cheating, or academic dishonesty as teachers and officials call it, is currently handled in generally the same way regardless of the situation. A student cheats and is punished, followed by officials announcing or implementing ways to stop the cheating in the future. Then, students find new ways to cheat and the process starts all over again.
An example from national news illustrates the trend in dealing with cheating quite well. According to foxnews.com, Idaho schools banned cell phones and iPods from classrooms when it was discovered they were being used for cheating. Banning the cell phones was an empty gesture, however, because students likely found new ways to cheat without the aid of technology. If it's impossible to take pictures of a test to send to a friend via high-tech phones, then students can always go back to using the trustworthy crib sheet and create another problem officials have to deal with.
A better way to solve the problem would be to change the format of the test to make cheating nearly impossible. Cheating on a multiple choice test can come in countless forms, but it's much harder to cheat on different forms of tests like essay exams. Professors might not want to forego the ease of use that Scantron and InQsit tests offer, but cheating isn't going to go away on its own. Additionally, students have a better chance of absorbing material if they're required to do more than just memorize and regurgitate information for a multiple choice test.
Cheating can be hard work, and the solution for cheating isn't going to be an easy feat either. Honest students will be the ones who are cheated if officials and teachers continue to use the same old crib sheet when trying to solve problems.
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